Wednesday, November 24, 2021

WAIT

 

Dear All of Us,

    "Wait a minute"

is usually a lot more wait 

than it is a minute.

We're a 

       "Hurry Up," 

       "Right Now" 

       "Amazon Prime"

kind of people and waiting scores  

a minus million and more with us.


Yet wait we do on checkout lines

behind sweet souls slowly doling out

wads of coupons, at the airport,

in the doctor's office, trying to get 

our new phone to be smart,

pondering ever more portals, 

waiting for over-stayed company 

to go home so we can go to bed.


Waiting is part and parcel of life.

It's woven into the deepest depths

of our experience all the way out 

to being stuck in traffic.

As such it is very much 

a dimension of our spiritual lives.

Let's wait a bit here and Soul Sense

The Spirituality of Waiting.


Waiting tells us to be in 

the here and now as they are, 

not as we demand they be.

It's a reality check,

a humility billable.

Waiting means presence

to what is, as is, 

preferred or decidedly not.

Waiting is participation in

God's Eternal Just Now 

as it is manifest in this moment 

of our awareness of it.

God is transtemporal and 

paradoxically quite "timely."

God simply 

                 IS

God is 

        THE ETERNAL NOW

What's going on in our 

time-bound perception of it 

is real and really limited.


Waiting means dealing with 

           Reality

           Existence

           Being

           Is-ness

as it occurs in our experience of 

          Right Now

Waiting overrides our 

clocks and calculations.

Waiting means being there

as there is just now.


           There 

may be the unfolding of 

    God's Creation

    in our just now 

    and require waiting

    of us.

We wait nine months 

for birth.

We wait a season 

for crops to mature.

Look at the wait as 

the Grand Canyon 

was carved out.

Humanity waited 

millions of years 

to begin understanding 

a bit of astrophysics.


          There 

may be the evolution 

of persons and peoples and

mean protracted waiting.

Sarah waited a long time 

to conceive.

The enslaved Israelites 

waited generations to be freed 

and forty more years 

trying to get their 

spiritual GPS functional.

We wait to find our life mate.

Most of us wait a long time 

to see and accept

God's Unlimited Love of us and 

God's Unlimited Love as 

the true dimension of our being,

the bedrock of Actuality.

We're still waiting to get 

Church right and real.

We wait bushels of 

years and experience

to mellow into maturity.

Worldwide we are in 

a dangerously long wait 

to structure our common life on

The Common Good.


        There

may mean waiting in 

a very bad place 

or circumstance

as health and justice 

get worked out.

See Jesus on the cross.

See the months it took waiting

for a Covid vaccine.

See the waiting still 

to admit and correct the evils 

of genocide and enslavement.

See the waiting for a loved one 

to work free of addiction.


Oh yes and for sure,

The Spirituality of Waiting

is dealing with 

what is,

as is, 

in our just now.

It means seeing 

where God is in it

and where we are 

with God in it.


So we pray for all those

stuck with us in traffic.

We stick with our life mates 

in their spin outs. 

We wait it out with 

the forty something at work

who has the emotional maturity 

of a six year old.

We stay the course with

our church that is more

institution than

a community in Love.

We stay open with ourselves 

even when we shut down in sin,

waiting for a season of strength,

of restoration, and of freshness.


Things negative and things positive

require that we wait it out 

as God works it out with us 

and our world.

It means a lot more wait than 

just a minute.

But then we have forever 

              NOW.

          

Thanks for waiting it out 

through this less than sexy part of 

spirituality for the street.


Out here with you on the waiting line,

                John Frank

                  ******

           "Wait for the Lord; 

            be strong, 

            and let your heart 

            take courage; 

            wait for the Lord."

              Psalm 27:14

   

                  ******

            

            Every good wish

        as many of us celebrate

              Thanksgiving

      I am deeply thankful for you 

      and our weekly sharing here at

                 frankly speaking

       spirituality for the street.

        This posting marks our 

           fifth anniversary.

         Over these five years 

        we have had community

        with sisters and brothers 

                   from  

        one hundred homelands.

           That's not a boast.

            That' a blessing.

              Thank You!

           See you next week.

            I can hardly wait.

                  ******

            frankly speaking

        spirituality for the street

      johnfrankshares.blogspot.com

                  ******